


this is how i learn to hold you

by Itgoeson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts First Year, Marauders' Era, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-04-30 10:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5160662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itgoeson/pseuds/Itgoeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The marauders & co - possibly even growing up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He’d known that Remus was in Gryffindor. He’d known that the dorms were fairly small affairs. He’d even known that Remus had been just in front of them almost the entire way to Gryffindor tower. It was why he’d pulled James aside – amazing, dazzling James, who he’d decided was his brother in the only way that mattered after first laying eyes on him – before they could follow Remus up the stairs. 

“There’s only one room for all of us first years, right?” Sirius asks. He doesn’t know why he asks it. He doesn’t know why he asks James, who he just met, who knows as well as he does that they’re going to be sharing a room with Remus and the blond boy who'd nearly disappeared under the Sorting Hat and had grinned all through dinner. 

What he does know is that Remus felt like sunlight through the window and warm rolls when he’d first seen him, and it felt right to plan their future wedding and their pets (a dog, obviously, giant and slobbering with oversized paws and floppy ears). Or at the very least, felt the need to make sure he was never out of sugar quills or whatever he wanted. Knitwear? His sleeves flopped over his hands, and Sirius felt there was a strong connection between knitted sweaters and covering one’s hands. Maybe he should find him a knitted sweater for Christmas.

“D’you know of any other places to stay?”

Sirius nodded. Kept nodding. Stopped it when he noticed. Smiled slightly. “Right then.” Nodded once more before walking up the stairs and resolutely opening the door to his new room.

Inside, Remus was pulling clothes from his trunk, smiling tiredly as a small boy with brilliantly blond hair and an exceptionally round face peppered him with questions too rapid-fire to answer. 

Sirius, for all that he did have a certain knack for judging people instantly, felt nothing as the smaller boy whipped around and smiled widely. 

“My name’s Peter. Peter Pettigrew. This is Remus. D’you two know each other then? Isn’t it so great, to be in Gryffindor? I was worried I’d be put in Hufflepuff. Mum always says I look like a sick sheep-herder in yellow. Unfortunate, that.” He cuts off abruptly and beams at them, fidgeting. Sirius stares, biting down on a “Good Lord, who taught you to speak?” that’s trying to come out. 

He wasn’t a Black here. His parents would be furious with his Sorting, and he needed friends – he’d seen the look on his cousins faces at the Slytherin table. 

“We’re James Potter and,” James says, making wavy gestures in turn, “Sirius Black. We met on the train. Reckon my family’s a bit too turncoat for them to invite us over for tea.”

Or, only nominally a Black, here. Sirius nods even as he considers punching James a little bit. He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Peter coughs a bit, shuffles. “Right, right. Well.”

Sirius waits for Peter to point out that, technically, he’s nearly as pure-blooded as the two of them, but he keeps quiet. Remus, too, though Sirius knows less about him, and can’t guess his blood status beyond that his father, at least, isn’t pure-blooded. Lupin was a surname he would have remembered.

Remus stops shuffling between his trunk and dresser, picking at a shirt in his hands, head bent. He flicks his eyes up, smiles, and goes back to moving in. Sirius resists the urge to ask him if he needs help or – worse – stare until his roommates get ideas about him. Still, he takes the opportunity to sneak looks as Peter starts on a new line of questioning, admiring the sloping lines of Remus’ back – slouching already? – the way his brown hair is slicked to within an inch of its life – does he run his hands through it? Does he like it that way? – the scar slicing down his right forearm and the bumpy patch that bisects it closer to the elbow – what kinds of accidents did children get into when playing?

He tunes back into the conversation in time to hear James explaining that they’d seen each other on the train and, well, a face you knew was probably better than a stranger. Peter smiled nervously at that. Sirius wondered if he always looked that starry-eyed, or if he’d just been very, very unfortunate in his friends in the past. 

James seems to like him, though, and Sirius is tired, the way he only is after meeting new people and dancing through the smiling-and-nodding-and-how-do-you-do’s. He smiles politely, waits for a break in the conversation, and clears his throat in a kind of apology. “Best be getting settled, then.”

///

The first week is a nightmare that nearly never ends. 

Sirius and James are late to their first three classes, lose Peter for half a day before finding him shaking slightly, arm disappeared into a portrait where it waves lazily in oil paint, and make no headway on befriending Remus. 

Sirius tries not to think too much about that last point. Instead, he takes to avoiding everything – he leaves off offering to study with Remus, takes an extra three staircases to avoid his cousins’ routes to class after lunch, leaves the letter from his father unopened for three six days, and doesn’t eat for two after reading it.  
The second week Sirius stays up all night playing exploding snap with a fanatical Lily Evans (“You have to play! It’s no fun with just two this way!”) and Marlene McKinnon, joined sometime in the middle of the night by a Dorcas Meadowes with the steadiest hands known to mankind. He’s nearly late to McGonagall’s class in the morning, but seeing Lily Evans with a charred eyebrow and faint grin more than makes up for it.

It’s not until the third week that Peter finally stammers out a “what are you” that freezes Remus in his tracks, goblet halfway to his mouth, sloshing orange juice all over his robes. Sirius blinks at Peter, feels his face shift a little closer to a panicked tightness and relaxes it immediately, and tries to casually pass Remus his napkin. James’ lips thin. Sirius holds his breath. 

“British.”

He looks straight at Sirius when he says it, and Sirius has to bite back a grin.

Peter blushes, moves his mouth to ask more, shakes his head, and grabs another slice of bacon. 

Remus is still blotting his robes.

Sirius gestures under the table with his wand and mutters a quick cleaning spell into his cup. Remus freezes, looking around in confusion. Sirius stares straight ahead, towards the Slytherin table. 

(He hasn’t talked to a single one of them since he came here, but Bella has made it her life’s work to whisper to her friends just loud enough for him to hear in the hallways, mention how disappointing it is to have family so far away, how tragic when someone turns out to be so different than you’d hoped they would be, how disappointing.)

(He’s also almost sure, though, that he heard Remus snort when she’d claimed his mother had been desolate when she’d heard about her son. He makes sure Remus’ bag had an extra chocolate in it by the end of the day.)


	2. Chapter 2

The fourth week, Remus goes missing.

Sirius purses his lips and looks at James, who seems to at least be better friends to each of them than they are to each other. He shakes his head though, and looks to Peter, who looks equally bewildered. 

“We should make a map,” Sirius tosses out. He likes Remus. He likes James and Peter, and in this whole stupid school it’s too easy to lose people. 

Peter laughs and James rolls his eyes but they aren’t arguing.

“We can look for him after class if he’s still gone. Maybe he just . . .” James squints, trying to come up with a plausible reason. “Maybe he wanted to go to the library?”

It’s not actually unreasonable. Sirius shrugs and follows them to breakfast. There’re ants on his spine, crawling up into a sick feeling in his throat, but Sirius shrugs it off. He’d once torn through the house, before coming here, when he couldn’t find Regulus. He’d opened every cabinet, every door, looked in every room and under all the furniture. Reg had been with their father, visiting with the Malfoys. 

(Sirius also carefully does not think about how Regulus had come back quiet and pale, like he’d been trying not to cry for hours.)

Lily is in the common room when they get back, and Sirius smiles at James and Peter before going to sit next to her. He likes her quite a bit, too. She’s calm, in the way that flowers are – so busy they seem to be standing still. 

“Good day, then?”

She looks up from her homework with raised eyebrows. “Fine enough, thanks.”

“Right.” He nods, then grins. “Professor Binn’s is pants at teaching. Help me with the essay?”

Lily laughs. “Black, we have the same class. Half the time you’re arguing with him under your breath. Where’d you learn all that, anyway?”

He hums. “My family’s big on history. Where we came from, you know, tracing our roots. The most noble, et cetera, et cetera.” He waves his hand. “How come you haven’t?”

She raises her eyebrows again, unimpressed. “I’m not from a magic family. Muggle-born, you’d say.”

Sirius blinks, slowly. Then again. “Huh.”

Lily grins, but it’s not at all comforting. “Is that a problem?”

“No. Uh, no. I just – you’re not all bad.”

He knows he said the wrong thing immediately. “And what’s that supposed to mean, Sirius Black?”

“Nothing! I swear. We just. Not everyone. I mean.” He looks at her, and he sees his little brother, too small to understand why no one wants to talk to him when they go to parties, why they whisper when Mother walks by, why it’s rude to say things like mudblood where people can hear. It’s worlds away from Lily, but he can’t help but think the two are more alike than they aren’t. He smiles, and this time it makes Lily relax, just a little.

“It means I might be a bit of an ass. I’m sorry. What was it like, finding out about magic, then?”

Marlene finds them three hours later, punch-drunk tired and giggling helplessly. She rolls her eyes and Lily blushes, telling Sirius goodnight before following her up the staircase.

Sirius watches them leave, amazed. About his new friends, about how interesting muggle life must be, about the way the stairs twist and wind without making him dizzy. He feels warmer than he has his whole life.

He gets to his room, and the temperature in his chest drops. James and Peter are in the middle of throwing candy wrappers at each other, the room a mess – the draperies are tangled, candy wrappers and quills litter the floor, and Remus’ bed is still perfectly made, drapes closed except for where Peter had thrown his backpack a little too far, pulling it back and away. 

He must stare a little too long, because Peter stands up and smiles. “Haven’t seen him yet, but McGonagall doesn’t seem worried. And she knows everything.”

“Didn’t see her rushing to help you out of that missing stair that trapped you when Peeves was splashing ink around, did it?” Sirius shoots back without thinking. James snorts, trying and failing to hold back hysterical laughter. Peter had let out an ear-splitting shriek that made Peeves crash into the ceiling, splattering ink over his face. A group of passing Hufflepuffs had stuck out their tongues at Peeves, giggling. One or two had given them a thumbs up. 

It’s another two days before Remus shows up in Divinations. Sirius wants to yell at him, for being so careless. Instead, he ties his fingers into knots, feels his cheeks going a blotchy red from the anger and relief. Next to him, Lily raises her eyebrows, smirking a bit..

Peter flips him off while James beams. 

“Thought you’d realized you were a squib after all, Remus.”

Remus rolls his eyes, looking a bit pale but otherwise normal, and shrugs. “Was busy, wasn't I?”

That’s enough for James, it seems. Peter follows his lead. Sirius flicks his eyes over to Lily, who has her elbows propped on their shared desk. She smiles a little before going back to finishing a note and tossing it over to a boy smaller than Peter, even, hunched over his desk. Sirius thinks maybe Remus needs to eat better, and tells himself to bring extra food back from the Great Hall that night, just in case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so trash, this fic is trash - my superpower is garbage, at this point. Also, the children - I am not good at writing them. But, y'know, in my experience, they're basically almost grown ups with less emotional maturity, so for whatever that's worth.


	3. Chapter 3

///

It happens again, and again, and Sirius isn’t good at friends, knows that he fits in because James has claimed him as his best friend the way Regulus had claimed Kreacher in some sort of weird childish gesture of friendship – he isn’t good at this, but he knows that Remus shouldn’t miss class once or twice a month and not show up to any meals. He brings it up one night, when Remus is in the library, but Peter laughs and goes back to practicing Charms like he isn’t a week ahead, and James snorts and adds a line to his already too-long essay and Sirius. Sirius does not want to make it into a Thing so he shrugs and goes back to staring out the window, watching as wind strips the trees and whips at the lake. 

He doesn’t want to go home, and the winter holidays are coming up, and Remus is pale when he comes back to their dorm. He sits across from Sirius, flops on the window seat and leans his head back, and Sirius thinks that he looks like the snakes his mother loves so much, deadly even when he looks sluggish and distant. It makes Sirius’ stomach knot, and he picks up the homework for Defense Against the Dark Arts he’d been putting off. 

///

Winter holidays come and go. James comes back with a new broom and his voice cracking. Sirius finds himself biting down on his laughter every time James speaks, and every time Remus mimics him and Peter looks like he’s absorbing sunlight, plant-like, being around his friends again. 

Sirius finds himself missing his brother, sometimes. He finds himself reckless more than that.

James gets a devilish look in his eyes three weeks after they come back from break, and begins poking around the castle every spare minute he gets. 

Remus continues to disappear. James starts to look worried, and Peter starts to throw out increasingly strange theories. (Sirius is partial to the one where Remus is actually a secret agent for Professor Binns, and is really collecting all sorts of weird news for him to teach.)

///

It’s a Tuesday. Sirius feels like that’s important. Maybe because it’s his least favorite day of the week, or maybe because there was a test in History of Magic and Lily likes to tease him about how much he secretly loves the class and Dorcas always pesters him with questions after class because she fell asleep halfway through and needs a summary. 

Maybe because Remus had had orange juice for breakfast that morning and Sirius thought that maybe it was because he was feeling sick, because orange juice was supposed to be good for you?

(Sirius nudged some of the blisteringly spicy soup he and James hoarded at meals towards Remus at lunch, just in case.)

Regardless, it was a Tuesday, and Peter had finally thrown his hands up and suggested combing the castle for Remus because this was ridiculous, and James looked a little out of it and mumbled, “might have been right about the map,” and Sirius had trouble sleeping on the best of days. 

They split up, sectioning off the castle.

Wandering around, Sirius thinks they should maybe have set a time to meet back in their room.

///

The next morning, the three shuffled out of the tower. Halfway through breakfast, head spinning a bit from exhaustion, Sirius looks at the orange juice and frowns. 

Well – there were odder places to be.

He waves to the others and slinks out of the Great Hall, winding his way to the infirmary. 

There were a few people in the beds, coughing or nodding off or, in the case of one seventh-year Slytherin, frantically trying to do homework while Madam Pomfrey scolded her about stress and “exactly why you landed here, dear, it’ll be alright.”

Sirius walks past them, head up and shoulders straight like he was meant to be there, the way his dad always had when he didn’t want to be bothered, over to the bed in the back with its curtains pulled tight. He ducked in and found –

Well. Remus, certainly.

Unfortunately. 

He was covered in bruises, his cheekbone swelled horribly tight and purple, bags under his eyes and birdlike hands twisted together over the covers. 

Remus’ eyes slit open as the curtains fall shut again, Sirius silently slipping into a chair. 

“Bad night, huh?” he asks. 

Remus shrugs a shoulder, but there’s a twist to his lips like he was smiling.

“Is it . . . is it someone here?”

Remus snorts, clears his throat. “Nah, Sir’us. Jus’ somethin’ that happens. Can’t, can’t tell anyone though. Please.”

Sirius stares at him. But, well. He’d say the same, in his place. He nods and settles into his seat. Remus had already drifted off again, anyway. No one to tell him to go away.

Besides, it was peaceful here, in the way Remus often was. Sirius drifts off, too.

///

Madam Pomfrey finds him like that, head tilted awkwardly to the side and ankles crossed. She laughs even as she shoos him out of the room. Remus smiles behind her back, looking better already. Sirius looks up at her with big eyes, but grins when she slips him a candy and a note for the class he was missing.

James and Peter glare at him when they get out of class, immediately asking where Sirius had been. 

Sirius purses his lips for a second, debating what to say, before nodding. No use telling them things he might not be supposed to. A half-lie never hurt. “Had to swing by the infirmary. Stomach hurt.” He holds up the note as proof before slipping between them to give it to McGonagall. 

She looks over her glasses at him, but smiles and waves off his promise to make up the homework and classwork.

“The homework will be fine, Mr. Black.”

Sirius shrugs and nods before darting back out, away from her approving look. He doesn’t know what it means, aside from maybe she knows he hadn’t had a real reason to miss class.

///  
Remus is asleep in his bed when they come back from dinner that night, curled around a pillow a shade or two paler than he is. Peter and James share a relieved look and the three of them quietly head back down to the common room. 

Marlene finds them there, huddled together and debating how to make a map of the school when they can barely keep track of the staircases.

“Sirius, snap?”

He jerks upright and grins, nodding. “Got to learn how to beat Dorcas sometime, yeah?” he says, waving at Peter and James and plopping himself down close to Lily. She’s smiling but it looks just the slightest bit strained, and he understands why Marlene would be wanting to cheer her up.

///

Sometime around one in the morning she mutters something about just wanting to be friends. Sirius frowns at her and cocks his head. 

Lily laughs and says he looks like a puppy when he does that, but. “Severus hasn’t been talking to me as much, lately. It’s dumb. We’ll work it out.” She shrugs, but Sirius thinks he might want to punch him for upsetting her, small and snarky as Severus is. 

///

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm officially trash, but this is also very close to being done, so here we are.


End file.
